Kantar: WP on the rise in th US, BB down, Android ahead of iOS

Android and iOS are slugging it out for the top spot in the US smartphone market, but the OS that showed the biggest year over year growth for the first quarter was Windows Phone, according to the latest report from Kantar.

Microsoft’s mobile OS gained 1.9 percentage points for a market share of 5.6% at the end of March. This solidifies Windows Phone’s third place position, albeit a distant one.

The analyst firm also points out that WP is seeing more interest from former featurephone owners – 52% of newcomers to WP previously had a feature phone, while only 45% and 49% of iOS and Android owners respectively upgraded from a featurephone. Over half of US phone users are yet to jump on the smartphone bandwagon, so Windows Phone can probably expect to see even more growth.

Anyway, Android now commands 49.3% of the smartphone market in the US, up from 47.9%. Its chief competitor, iOS, went down a notch to 43.7% (from 44.6%).

BlackBerry lost more share though, 1.7 percentage points, and is currently down to 0.9% market share. “Other” smartphone OSes also declined and now sit at 0.5%.

The situation with carriers in the US meanwhile is more stable – Verizon remains on top with 37.2%, AT&T second with 27.9% and Sprint third with 12.3%. T-Mobile lost some ground (3.2 percentage points) and fell to 9.5%.

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